Chapter The Close of Eighteenth Century of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

Paine. Its career began in January, 1775, and ended gloriously with the printing of the Declaration of Independence, in July, 1776. Hugh H. Brackenridge edited The United States Magazine at Philadelphia in 1779. The Boston Magazine appeared -- and disappeared -- in 1785. But it was not until the beginning of the new century that anything like a substantial existence was enjoyed by any periodical of this class.

Suggestions for Reading.

Tyler's History of American Literature during Colonial Times and his Literary History of the American Revolution (2 vols.) will serve as authoritative background for this chapter. Stedman and Hutchinson's Library of American Literature, vols. 2,3, and 4, supplies selections from all the writers enumerated here. The period of the eighteenth century is admirably covered in American Literature (Literatures of the World) by W.P. Trent. For more personal reference, see The Samuel Sewall Papers -- Mass.Hist.Soc. Col. -- 1879; also N.H. Chamberlain's Samuel Sewall and the World he lived in (Boston, 1897), the life of Jonathan Edwards (American Religious Leaders) by Alexander Allen, and Austin's Philip Freneau. Brief authoritative biographies of Franklin, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Jay, and Madison are included in the American Statesmen Series. Selections from the Revolutionary orators will be found in the third volume of The Library of Oratory, and in volume eight of The World's Famous Orations. Illustrations of the Revolutionary verse are accessible in Stevenson's Poems of American History; Moore's Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution and in American War Ballads, edited by George Cary Eggleston. The best poems of Freneau are to be found in Stedman's American Anthology (Houghton Mifflin Co.). The Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife Abigail Adams, edited by Charles Francis Adams, are an especially interesting record of the period, also Scudder's Men and Manners in America One Hundred Years Ago. There are numerous biographies of Franklin: Morse's Life in the American Statesmen Series has been cited; that by McMaster in the American Men of Letters Series is excellent. A larger biography in two volumes is the Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, by James Parton. Of course Franklin's own Autobiography is indispensable. The most recent authoritative edition of the complete writings of Franklin is that edited by Albert H. Smyth in ten volumes, now published in most convenient form, for $15.00 (the Eversley Edition, Macmillan). Besides Cooper's The Spy and The Pilot, there are several recent novels which may well be read as illustrating the life of the colonies in the eighteenth century; among these are Lewis Rand, by Mary Johnston, Hugh Wynne, by Dr. Weir Mitchell, Janice Meredith, by Paul Leicester Ford, and Richard Carvel, by Winston Churchill. The student should include in his reading at least one of the novels of Charles Brockden Brown (reprinted in Philadelphia, by David McKay, 1889).

Chapter 1 of McMaster's History of the People of the United States will be found most interesting in its discussion of social conditions in America during the century and at the close of the Revolution. Read especially the sections upon the minister and the schoolmaster.

Recent and important is Heralds of American Literature, -- Annie Russell Marble (University of Chicago Press, 1907). It contains chapters on Francis Hopkinson, Freneau, Trumbull, The Hartford Wits, William Dunlap, and Charles Brockden Brown; also Life and Poems of Philip Freneau, by F.L. Pattee (Princeton Historical Association).

Cairns' Early American Writers, 1607-1800 (Macmillan), is an admirable volume of selections illustrating the work of all the writers mentioned in these two chapters. The Poems of Philip Freneau are now accessible in three volumes, edited by F.L. Pattee (Princeton Historical Association).

A CHRONOLOGICAL REVIEW OF AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY	HISTORICAL EVENTS.	JOURNALS, HISTORIES, AND LETTERS.	ESSAYISTS AND ORATORS.	POETRY, SATIRE, DRAMA, AND FICTION.	CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE IN GREAT BRITAIN.
Reign of Queen Anne,	Cotton Mather's Magnalia	Jonathan Edwards, 1703-58.	The Sot Weed Factor, 1708.	Addison and Steele's Essays in
1702-14.	Christi Americana, 1702.		Jonathan Odell, 1737-1818.	the Spectator, 1711-14.
George I, 1714-27.	Journal of Madam Knight's	The Enfield Sermon, 1741.	Satires, 1779.	Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, 1719.
George II, 1727-60.	Trip from Boston to New	Freedom of the Will, 1754.	Jonathan Trumbull,